Friday, February 12, 2010
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Odysseus Slaughters the Suitors
In your judgment, what is the most important value in the Odyssey?
Odysseus and Eumaeus
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February
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- Is the Slaughter Justified?
- I've Got a Bad Feeling About This . . .
- She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not, . . .
- What Has Odysseus Learned?
- Deceit & Distrust
- Argos
- Odysseus v. Rama (v. Gilgamesh?)
- In Media Res: Narrative vs. Chronological Order
- Seductresses in The Odyssey
- The Sirens' Song
- "The Great Teller of Tales"
- Fame -- I Want to Live Forever
- I'll Follow You to Hell and Back: Odysseus' Leader...
- Fathers and Sons
- The Guest-Host Relationship
- Competition in Greek Society
- Odysseus's Character
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February
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Odysseus and the Sirens
Odysseus Blinding Polyphemus
In your judgment, who is the BIGGEST obstacle to Odysseus' journey home?
Telemachus and Penelope
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ReplyDeleteI fully agree with what Spencer said about Caylpso. Cicre is another seductress character in the Odyssey. E very time any man stumbles into her house she treats them with kindness and respect. But then once she has fed them and buttered them up…she turns them into pigs! Circe is only able to do this because of her looks. It does not make sense why the crew would walk into her home if they knew how she was. “The home of Cicre, the nymph with lovely braids, and an awesome power too, wo can speak with human voice the true sister of murderous –minded Aeetes. Both were bred by the Sun who lights our lives: their mother was Perse a child the Ocean bore” (10.148-153). Odysseus is wise enough to know that they should not deal with Cicre or Caylpso and yet look what happened. Eurylochus at least was brave and smart enough to stay outside the house? If he did not do that little thing, than Odysseus would never have been able to save his men.
ReplyDeleteAnother time Cicre was seductress was when Odysseus went into the house and to talk to her. He had already talked to Hermes so he knew how to fool her and so he was able to act however he wanted to. Circe thinks of him with high thoughts because when the met she said, “You must be Odysseus the man of twists and turns –“(10.366). News of Odysseus had spread around and so quickly that she automatically knew he was. At this point Cicre lost all of her seductress motives. She then started to help Odysseus plan his trip to the house of death and never once again did she harm him and even turned Odysseus’s crew back to men.
My point on this post is that Cicre is only really seductress with her ‘turning men into pigs’ motives. But underneath she really is a kind nymph who is willing to help anyone.
I agree with Kate and Spencer. Women play a very important role in the Odyssey, one of which is the role of the seductress. Circe and Calypso being the most prominent examples of this, I would like to focus on the less obvious examples, such as Helen, Penelope, and The Sirens. First, I think Helen is a seductress because basically the entire Trojan War was caused by her unfaithfulness to Menelaus. If she had not acted like a seductress and ran off with Paris, Odysseus would not have had to leave home. I also think Penelope is a seductress because she even though she does not seduce the suitors, she basically goes through the motions of doing so. Oftentimes, she leads them on, one example being her promise to marry one of them as soon as she finishes making a burial shroud, which she secretly undoes every night. She also claims that she will marry whomever gives her a nice gift, therefore making her a seductress. The seductress is most often perceived as dangerous and harmful to man, which in a sense is true. The Sirens are a perfect example of that; anyone who hears their song will be transfixed by it and die. I would like to point out that in the thesaurus, “siren” is a synonym for seductress. I’m not really sure if that’s a coincidence or not, but I found it interesting. Circe tries to seduce Odysseus prior to helping him, whereas Calypso seduces him with sex and immortality and keeps him prisoner. I think one of the hero’s duties is to resist the temptation of women, whether it be the Sirens or a beautiful goddess, or ultimately it will contribute to his downfall.
ReplyDeleteThe most obvious seductress is Calypso. Calypso is a goddess-nymph who lives on an island and at one point has Odysseus trapped there. When she and Odysseus are on this island they are constantly seducing one another but most of the seducing is done by Calypso.
ReplyDelete“So then,
royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, man of exploits,
still eager to leave at once and hurry back
to your own home, your beloved native land?
Good luck to you, even so. Farewell!
But if you only knew, down deep, what pains
are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore,
you'd stay right her, preside in our house with me
and be immortal. Much as you long to see your wife,
the one you pine for all your days. . . and yet
I just might claim to be nothing less than she,
neither in face nor figure. Hardly right, is it,
for mortal woman to rival immortal goddess?
How, in build? in beauty?” (Book 5.223-247)
Calypso begs and also seduces Odysseus because she has had no one with her for so long. She has had no activity and has had no man to love. Calypso keeps offering him things if he stays with her and continues her little games. Before Odysseus came into the picture she was lonely and with Odysseus on the island Calypso had power over him, as she was the main seducer.
During the book seductresses often seduce the heroes that are trying to return home (Circe, Calypso and Sirens) and I think that because of this a seductress is look upon as a bad person. Calypso seduces Odysseus with sex and tries to keep him on her island with immortality. I think that the seductress should not be put at fault because the person that is being tempted needs to resist the temptation because if they do not it will lead to bad things. (We see this throughout the story) Odysseus is continually seduced by seductresses because he just does not know how to resist. Odysseus has to continually be helped by other good women to resist the seductresses. In the society in the book we get the impression that men cannot resist any form of love whether it is sex or indulgence. Just like Odysseus and Penelope. Odysseus many times has sex and she sits back at Ithaca trying to keep the suitors from seducing her by tricking them so she can be with Odysseus. I think the besides seductresses. Women are the faithful people in this community and men are unfaithful.
I agree with what Spencer, Kate, and Sarah Toil have said about Calypso, Circe and the other seductresses, some being less obvious than others. But I'm going to talk about the final seductresses: the Sirens. In the Odyssey, the Sirens live on an island and when they sing their song, men can't resist them, and are tempted to the island. When Odyssey and his men come to the island, his crew puts beeswax in their ears, the only way to block the Siren’s tempting song, while Odysseus has his men tie him up. He asked them to do so because he knew that when he heard their call, he would act irrationally. Even though he could have simply put beeswax in his ears like the rest of his crew, he did not do so. Even though this may seem irresponsible and irrational of him, he might have just simply felt like he wanted to know what the Sirens’ call did to someone, maybe so he could tell the story later on. Even though Odysseus has been acting irresponsibly in the past books of this epic, he shows some responsibility in his decision to be tied up. He was able to balance his temptation and his responsibility to his crew, which is an example that shows that he is a good leader, despite past actions with the other seductresses, Calypso, who he was with for ten years on her secret island, and sleeping with Circe, showing that he is unfaithful to his wife, and a bad leader to his crew. Overall, the Sirens can be the absolute seductresses because of the power of their song.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do agree with the points brought up by those before, I want to focus on the Sirens as Caroline did before me. I am actually going to compare the typical seductress to the Sirens. One very distinct difference between seductresses such as Circe and the Sirens is that the Sirens are from a distance and are not even seen, for the most part. Circe and Calypso come up close and personal with their “prey” and lure them into bed. The Sirens on the other hand, attempt to lure in their “prey” from a distance. This is due to the fact that the Sirens have different motives than the other two seductresses mentioned. Both Circe and Calypso want to keep their “prey” trapped, while the Sirens want to make their “prey” crash into the sharp rocks. The Sirens want to kill rather than trap, so this is why they make their luring attempts from a distance. Killing from a distance was the only way to kill someone passing by when the Sirens’ only tools were their voices and environment. On a different note, the Sirens are similar to the other seductresses in the fact that they are classified as a seductress. They are all trying to make someone do something and then regret it the next day (if they are able to (and are not dead)). The Sirens are seductresses, but they are not any typical seductresses.
ReplyDelete(Can someone disagree with someone? I have read the phrase, “I agree with…” way to many times.)
Okay Andrew, I think I am going to have to disagree; I do not think that I can classify the Sirens as seductresses. A seductress by definition is, “a woman who seduces.” In the Odyssey we have seen many examples of women who, as Andrew pointed out, lure men and their crew to their home in hopes of trapping them their. These women often seem to long for a bit of company and enjoy keeping their men their by means of a “game”, often one that leaves the man who is the major object of their affection, in this book it is most commonly Odysseus, trapped without a working crew. Take the example of Circe, who trapped Odysseus’ men on her island as pigs while he remained a man who she promptly seduced.
ReplyDeleteNow back to my point about the Sirens. While Circe is an excellent example of a seductress, I do not believe that the Sirens can be put in the same category. First of all the Sirens lure passing ships to their island with their song that promises the greatest knowledge man can imagine. They offer tempting education that men are almost bewitched to believe will better their chances of a successful trip home, rather than offering themselves like so many other women in the Odyssey do. Along with this point, we are led to believe that the Sirens never make any actual contact with the men that they bewitch, and instead send them crashing into the rocky cliffs surrounding their island. What the Sirens are doing, in my opinion, is not seducing the unlucky men who travel past their home, but luring them into nothing more than a death trap. While it is nearly impossible to tell if the Sirens’ promises of this higher education are empty, if they truly wish to educated someone who could land safely on their home, or if their ultimate goal is to kill, I still cannot truly put them in the category of seductresses alongside characters such as Circe or Calypso.